SCARS
by NoBuddy
Summary: Warning: Massive Crisis Core spoilers ahead! Genesis in Nibelheim, waiting for Sephiroth to come.


**A/N: I had to write this because I was trying to understand why Genesis had been so harsh on Seph in Nibelheim in the reactor. This is what I came with. The title of the story comes from Papa Roach's song called "Scars"; I always thought that its lyrics fit Genesis perfectly and they gave me the idea for the explanation of his apparently ruthless behavior in that moment. Yeah, many of us found annoying his neverending habit of quoting Loveless and asked themselves why the heck didn't he just tell Seph the truth? Well, he did and then everyone called him a heartless bastard for the way he did it. But why he chose that particular way? What did he think of all this? How did he feel about it?**

**Initially I wanted to insert the original lyrics of the song in my story, but to avoid any possible copyright problem, I changed them, though just enough as to be still recognizable.**

**Disclaimer: All the FF7 characters belong to Square Enix. The song "Scars" belongs to Papa Roach.**

**S**** C A R S**

"_I rip my heart apart, I sew it back again  
The only fault of mine is that I cared too much, my friend  
And my wounds are here to show me that the past is still alive  
I rip my heart apart, just to feel is why I strive"_

Dear Seph,

My friend.

My brother.

I am here now and I am waiting for you. Right here, where everything started, long ago.

In Nibelheim.

I may not have too much time left, you know. I am aging with every moment passed. I'm aging even as I sit here waiting for you, while life seems to rush past me and everything goes larger and faster by the minute.

Now I understand old people. Do you know how it's like, Seph? No, of course you haven't got a clue, my friend.

You get sicker and sicker. And you can't keep the pace anymore. Where you were running before, darting like an arrow, now you can only walk and hard enough. You used to fly up the stairs, now you can barely drag yourself on them step by step, breathing heavily and clutching the handrail with shaky hands. World grows terrifyingly large, all of a sudden. Places you could reach in two large steps in the past now seem like miles away from you as you crawl pathetically towards them, inch by inch. It's frustrating, my brother. And disheartening. You begin to feel useless, just a good-for-nothing old crook, a burden for the younger and healthier ones to carry.

The heart problems. That small piece of meat that has kept you going for years on end and suddenly begins to grow weak and beats fast and uneven as if you have been running the marathon when you didn't even leave your place or gotten out of bed.

The breathing problems, as you drag hungrily mouthfuls of air, feeling as if you need to drain the whole darn atmosphere to be able to fill your lungs and yet you still need more, yet you feel suffocating bit by bit, fading like a candle without the oxygen to keep you going.

The pain, sharp like a knife in places and organs you didn't even know you had.

In two words: body failure.

And you know what's worst, Seph? Do you?

The nights. Yes, the nights. I used to have nightmares before, because of my visions of this dreadful future that has already come. You know that well enough, you had to shake me countless times to wake me up from them. Now I only wish so bad I could sleep, at least for an hour or so, as nightmarish that sleep would get to be, instead of just lingering in my shelter counting the seconds of darkness and trembling in horror. Fighting painfully for another and another gulp of air, wondering which one of them would be the last. Fearing that I would never get to see the day again, that this night is my last one here in this world, that it will last forever or at least as long as I'm still breathing and sun will only be released to rise over my lifeless decrepit form as my spirit has already been swept away by the endless darkness, never to see the light again.

How is that for a hero's end, Seph?

So here I am now, sitting here with my small player next to me, to break this creepy silence. How I love music! I always had, you know it too so well, my friend. My brother.

I sit here listening to my music and waiting for you to come. This song I'm listening seems to fit us so damn well, you know I've always liked it. Daddy Bug's „Wounds".

"_I rip my heart apart, I sew it back again  
__The only fault of mine is that I cared too much, my friend!"_

... because all I ever wanted, all I ever wished was to help you, my brother.

Don't you know that? Didn't you see it? Couldn't you tell?

I've seen you in my visions ever since I was just a mere kid. I grew up with your tortured picture inside my mind, behind my eyes, open or closed. I saw you down the labs, cut and sewed and cut and sewed again, a wretched rag on that monster's working table along with countless other animals, more like a slaughter house than a scientific lab. And I kneeled at night in my fancy bed and I cried for you, my little brother. Because I saw you remaining pure and unaltered in the pitch bottom of that hell. The shine inside your soul stayed alight and unbroken.

How did you do that? How could you manage to remain human despite all that you had to bear? How did that monster not succeed in turning you into a beast like him?...

I couldn't have made it through all of this in your place. I would have gone insane and one day I would have just grabbed some saw or scalpel from their tables and kill them all.

Yes, I'm not as good as you.

I looked at all my life, my rich life, with everything I ever wished surrounding me, with every whim fulfilled, with two loving parents fussing around me, even though I already knew they weren't my real ones. With Angii as a friend. With Gillian as a second mom. Or maybe first, come to think of it now...

You never had any of these, all along your lone and forsaken childhood.

My free life, free under the sky, the sun, the rains... You never even knew there was such a thing as the sky. First time you ever found yourself under its endless blue, you were so overwhelmed that you fell on your knees and threw your guts up, shaking like a leaf with nausea and fright.

How could they do this to you, my brother? How could they do this to any human being on this planet? How can people be such wolves to each other? It breaks my heart every time I think of it.

I should have ended up a despicable brat, like that little bastard Rufus Shinra. I could have, you know? But I had you every moment in front of my eyes and behind my closed eyelids, in my mind. Inside my soul. Tortured on a daily basis by a psychopat so-called scientist in a lab. Why was I so lucky when you were not? What were you paying for, a mere child at the whims of a monster with a human face? Why were we, me and Angii, treated different, why were we let free, or at least as free as we could get in Banora, while you had to endure all that hell underground??

I made a vow then, one that would only break together with my life. A vow that I would find you and I would make sure you'd get all the love you deserved and a normal life, like you should have had from the very beginning. With friends. With me and Angii, if no one else. With our families as your family too.

How I wished to just take you and Angii and go somewhere far far away, where they wouldn't be able to reach us! But I knew there wasn't such a promised land for us. Gillian had already tried that when she had learned that she was pregnant with Angeal and yet they caught her. No. This wasn't the way. They had tried to make us the strongest beings on Gaia. Not simple men, but some monsters with only enough sense to obey their orders. They were going to hunt us down all over this godsforsaken world. They had put money and research in us. They'd want their tools back. Because that was what we were to them. Just slightly human tools.

So I came to ShinRa. With Angii. I came here just for you and I learned their ways. I came here to give you what I had vowed so long ago and to take down ShinRa from the inside. I came here to love you and to hate them all.

Remember how we first met? Remember the rather skinny boy with the eyes of an already mako freak that came to you one day and proudly offered you a purple apple and a can of juice? You were already my hero back then, even though the war hadn't even started yet, my friend. You were my hero for the way you had carried through more than ten years of horror at the very bottom of the deepest circle of hell and yet you remained more human than anyone else I had ever known. I had even told my parents, when I won that contest back in Banora for my apple juice, how one day I wanted to bring you the fruits of my success. To share them with you, my hero Sephiroth.

And then, finally, here I was.

I laugh and cry at the same time now, remembering how you backed away and looked at me with apprehension and how your lips even curled with instinctive repulsion at my modest but whole-hearted offer. You had never eaten anything at least remotely tasty in your whole life that far – ha ha, don't we all know the ‚quality' of ShinRa's inedible slops?! – and you didn't even know that food could actually be pleasant to eat, so you couldn't get it why on Gaia I would want to offer you food, of all things, as something to enjoy!

I laugh, but I cry more, my beloved brother. I laugh, but I laugh bitterly and sad. It still hurts to remember you like that.

What have they done to us? Why did the Goddess let this happen?

Oh, of course I know why. Now I know.

Because, some time before coming to Midgar to find you and join Soldier, I had discovered LOVELESS.

And reading it, all of a sudden, everything started to make sense.

I couldn't believe my own eyes, you know that? It was all there! WE were all there! With the whole terrifying truth of our lives.

With all that was to come.

With death and misery and pain.

"_And my wounds are here to show me that the past is still alive  
__I rip my heart apart, just to feel is why I strive"_

Why didn't you ever listen to me, brother?

Why have I been the only one to see, to understand? Why couldn't you see it too?

I felt so hopelessly lonely in my knowledge! So helpless and alone...

Staying aside and watching it gathering, like zillions of minuscule disparate pieces creeping along apparently meaningless, apparently at random, in a brownian move, but in fact crawling without fail to their place written in stone. To finally form a horrible pattern, the crushing fresco of our lives, moving implacably to the most terrifying end that could ever be imagined. And we're living it right now.

An end I tried to stop, pouring drops of water in a volcano like a mad man.

I could have done it with you and Angii! We, all three, could have done it!!

Now he is gone. He, the one that always took me for what I was, that always stood by me no matter what, he could not take this. He could not bear to feel the last shred of humanity he thought he had, being taken away from him.

Sometimes I cannot even think of this. Sometimes I still cannot forgive him for leaving me, for leaving US. Sometimes I hope desperately, against all odds, that he'd be strong enough to remain undissipated in the Lifestream and do something, anything, I don't even know what, whatever, from out there, to help us win. He should be that strong. We are the strongest men on Gaia.

Ha ha ha! Aren't we??

Seph, we're the only ones left now, here on earth. And we have to stop this, my friend. We have to stop this madness, but I know that the madness is already inside us. It has been all the time. It makes us strong and yet it makes us weak as well.

It's the strongest in you, this demon.

My friend. My baby brother Seph.

Tonight I'm telling you the truth.

The naked truth. The whole truth and nothing but the truth, so help me Goddess. I tried for years to tell you, to teach you, to make you understand what Loveless stood for beyond the play everyone saw. I tried for months again, to tell you the truth that I had only learned when it cut my soul just like that sword splinter cut my already rotting flesh after our last duel.

You are the brightest mind on this planet, Seph. This is what they made us, all of us. Three monsters, with the best battle skills and the brightest minds. Why couldn't you just see it?

"_I tried so hard to help you  
__I knew it was in vain  
__I watched you slowly sliding  
__Oblivious and inane"_

I know, my friend, I know I should not judge you too harsh. You always did whatever you could to protect us. You always played the charade to ShinRa for us just to keep us safe, even after we were gone – and especially then.

They wanted to send you after us and you refused. Indeed, this is a right every 1st Class Soldier has, to refuse a mission. But this wasn't any mission. We were your friends, your equals and they knew that. And refusing you let them question yourself too and your own loyalty to them. They could count you as a traitor too right there and then, you think I don't know that? Don't I know how things work in ShinRa?!

And yet you did it. Because, if you had taken this mission and had come after us, then you would have only had to kill us both or bring us back. And you could never do that. You could never raise your hand against us, your only two friends. The only family you ever got.

Poor tortured soul, how bad we hurt you! Believe me, my loved friend, we didn't want to do so. You thought we betrayed you. You thought we left you behind, all alone. You saw yourself once again deserted, wanted by no one, and even us seemed to not care about you anymore. And yet, in all this hell of doubt and loneliness and pain, you remained loyal to us with all your heart.

Believe me, my dear friend, I so wished things went differently!

It's true, at least at first, when I learned the truth about us after that duel, I didn' want to tell you. I wanted to discover it all, to understand it, before anything else, before telling you and Angii about it. Before taking away from you any illusion about the humanity we still had. I didn't know how you would take it. Look what it did to Angii! It destroyed him. _**I...**_ destroyed him, when I told him the whole truth. And when I decided to finally leave ShinRa, I just thought it was better for you not to know about it. It was my way to protect you, Seph. You always were an honest, loyal soul and knowing this, about my treason, would have tormented you, or so I thought. But thinking we deserted you and left without a word, without explaining you anything at all, tormented you anyway, much more.

I was stupid, my brother, and I hurt you even when I was trying not to do it.

But I was hurt myself beyond words.

How do you think it is to learn that you're just a lab creation, a put-together mixture of genes, only partly human? I was still in denial, thinking that all this was just a preposterous lie, while I was lingering in my bed in Hollander's medical unit, waiting in vain for my wound to close. I knew you had offered your own blood to heal me, even though Angeal hadn't told me. How could I not know this, my beloved brother, when I had always been in your mind ever since I know myself? How else could I see all that you had been through, all of those dark and too long years? You felt rejected and dejected. Why wasn't your blood good enough for me? You felt guilty for my wound. You thought you should have stopped our fight earlier, before getting too caught in it, but it wasn't your fault, my friend. We've always loved to fight, both of us. We've always loved to prove our best, to challenge each other, to test ourselves to every limit; we would both get carried by the heat of battle. How your eyes shone with anticipation each and every time we raised our swords to duel!

This is what we are, this is what we were meant to be: warriors. So it wasn't your fault, my friend. I never blamed you for what happened that day.

And as I lay there, in my bed in Hollander's lab, trying to reach you with my mind, to soothe your sorrow for not being let to help me, not even to see me, I will never forget the pain, the agony, the terror I went through that night, when the wing emerged from my shoulder for the first time, ripping apart my rotting flesh, splashing everything around with the blood Angeal had only earlier given to me! I was all alone, that Hollander bastard hadn't left there at least a nurse to be around in case I needed anything over the night. There was no one to hear my howls of pain, no one to stop the blood, no one to lift me up from the cold floor where I had fallen, twisting and struggling and crying for a help that wouldn't come. How I wished you were there, you and Angii! But you were not.

Only a day before we had stayed together in our favourite place, the Junon Cannon. A virtual one oh well, but still as real as one could get. Only a day before I had read you from Loveless once again and, once again, you huffed my friend and tapped your head in slight exasperation. Then we put Loveless aside and started to spar, as we always did. It seemed like we still had enough time ahead of us. The prophecy was so clear to me but it seemed like a still distant future. Only a day before all this had been and yet it felt like long ago, in another life, a human one. Then, after only a day, I was breaking down in pain, spitting blood and regarding with horror the huge appendage erupted from my shoulder, large black feathers, soaked in the crimson pools splattered on the tile floor, brushing against my frozen skin.

What was I going to tell you then, my brother? How was I going to let you know that I was just a monster after all, that you and Angii were as well?? How was I going to show you THAT?...

I didn't. I learned to hide it, at least for a while. I hid it, racing against time to find out the whole truth, to come to terms with it, before I would be ready to tell you that you were the same, that it was going to happen to you too some day, maybe just a few months later, as you were these months younger, maybe way sooner, as you were much more Jenova-enhanced.

How was I going to tell Angeal that this could happen to him too any moment, as the age difference between us was of mere days?...

It was time for me to leave ShinRa behind.

I rushed with the preparations before anything irrepairable would happen. The burst of another wing maybe, or maybe something much worse, some monstrous treat that would expose me without fail for what I was, for the monster that I had become, something not even Hollander was able to foresee.

Still people that knew me, the soldiers that fought along with me, with us, so many times in the past, thousands of them, vowed to follow me. How did they know when you were completely oblivious of what I was doing, my brother? Oh, very simple: I hid from you. It pained me, but I wasn't ready yet to break your heart like that. Do you remember how you were when we first met? How, after all those years spent down the labs, you weren't so sure that you were even human? Do you remember how me and Angii fought to no end with your fears and uncertainties, how we had to teach you the human ways and help you accept that you were as human as anyone else on this planet? How was I going to tell you now that I had discovered it to not be true, that I was just a monstrous freak and so were you, my friend?...

How was I going to tell you this terrifying truth?

So I left with my army. They trusted me to the very end and I didn't hesitate to tell them that the end was nigh. They had never questioned their humanity before. I could tell this truth to them and they still followed me and even accepted to take my face and a part of my strength, to be turned into my clones, because they were most of all furious and they all wanted their revenge on ShinRa. No one had told them before what the mako treatments really involved and, more than anything else, no one had ever told them about the Jenova cells being injected in them, altering their humanity, though much less than ours – mine, yours and Angeal's.

Angeal... he followed me quickly enough. His wings had just emerged as well and, though he had refused to come with me at first when I had asked him to join me, now he finally started to understand why I had left, though I hadn't had the time to tell him anything so far.

He thought that I accepted our true nature much easier, too easy.

He was wrong.

When his puppy came after us with Tseng in Banora, instead of you, he accused me of killing my parents. And it hurt, you know? He knew nothing of me, of us; a mere kid, boasting around with his new-found strength and thinking that world was at his feet and that he knew everything, this little fool! Judging us before even knowing anything at all! I was so mad I could kill him right there on the spot, but that would not have changed anything, would not have brought back our parents, or all the villagers killed by my men in their rage against ShinRa, when they had found out from the old scripts that almost every person in that place had been a ShinRa spy set there years and years before to guard us, me and Angii.

You didn't come, my brother. But I wasn't disappointed. I understood. You couldn't come without having to fight us. And you would never do that. And in the end I even understood why you sent the puppy of all people to come there after us. You hoped that he would convince us to come back.

Nevermore.

Nothing was going to be the same from that moment. I knew there was no return and Angeal... he didn't know anything anymore at the time. He was confused and horrified. And pain-stricken, after the death of his mother, Gillian. The one that had raised both of us after all and inoculated us the very first notions about honor and pride and love for truth.

None of us denied killing our parents when Zack accused us. Why? Because we knew that, no matter if it had been done with our own hands or not, their blood was on us either way. They would have been still alive, all of them, had it not been for us and for what we were.

All of our lives had been sealed long before we were even born.

And yet I couldn't accept this, though even the ancient prophecy, Loveless, sounded so dark and hopeless. I wanted to fight this, my brother. And I wanted to fight it with you and Angeal. I knew my army would be good maybe for ShinRa, but Jenova was something else. It was inside us. And it was strongest inside us three, with all the genes and cells of it that we three had. How were we gonna fight it?

It tried to take control of me, the wretched thing, did you know that?

No, of course you don't. But that's what happened. And I laughed in its face. Yes, my brother, I laughed in the face of that demon and it didn't win on me. But I knew I was just lucky because I only had its genes, not its cells like you. Yes, Hojo was greedy. He wanted it all, he wanted to do more than Hollander, he wanted to gain more, to be able to win the job as the Head of the Science Department. And he didn't hesitate to put the doom on you for this. What was an unborn child to him, to the monster that had ordered people to be kidnapped from the streets so he could experiment on them on the pretext that anyway they were just scums from the slums? What was a fetus to him? Just a piece of meat. That's what you were, my little brother, to the one that supposedly was your father. It made me sick to discover this. Forgive me, Seph, but this I cannot tell you. I won't! I'm telling you the truth tonight, that is why I am waiting for you here, where everything had begun so long ago, to tell you the whole truth – and I am not going to be poetic and mild about it anymore – but I will NOT tell you that your father might be this beast with slightly human face.

"'_Cause you're sinking in the deep  
And I rushed to dry the sea  
I ripped my heart apart  
And yet you didn't see"_

...And it felt so maddening! Loveless had become, all of a sudden, a matter of life and death. Our life and maybe death were written there and I kept throwing hints at you, over and over again, in the hope that you would understand it sooner. But you never did.

Remember how we met some time ago in that reactor in Midgar? I waited for you there too, just like now, and I sat upstairs listening to you as you were evoking more to yourself than to Zack-the-puppy our last spar on the virtual Junon Cannon. You had just discovered Angeal's inhuman clone and you were confused and horrified. I was thinking of how to make the puppy go away so I could talk to you unhindered, when Hollander showed up, helping me without even knowing.

Remember how you watched me as I was pointing my sword at you? There was no fear in your eyes. No fear of dying by my sword. You were just looking at ME instead, to see if **I** had changed. Why was I, your friend, your brother, pointing a weapon at you? And you saw in my eyes, in my ever-loving eyes, that I had not been altered. You hadn't even tried to defend yourself, not even _**before**_ seeing that I had not changed. You just stood there at the end of my lethal sword and gazed at me.

And I tried to tell you again, using Loveless' metaphors, in case someone would still be around to hear us, I tried so hard to tell you the truth. I pinned you again with quote after quote, but you were just as clueless as ever, as oblivious of the truth in Loveless as you had always been. I even went so far as to tell you that **I** should have been the hero of that story, as the result of the first project, Project G. Which meant that **I** should have been what you were, my friend, the perfect monster resulted from a ruthless experiment. Instead I was just a failure. I had failed both ways, I was neither human enough, nor a perfect monster like you were. I had been just the forerunner on the way to turning people into perfect beasts. And so had Angeal been. But you, you my friend, you were something else. You were the perfect result. Where Hollander had shied away, not knowing or not daring to push it to the very end, Hojo hadn't hesitated to go down to the last circle of Hell. So me and Angii had the genes, he more than me, but still just genes.

You had the demon's cells.

And I tried to tell you that. In riddles, so that anyone else would not understand.

But neither did you, sadly. You thought I was just jealous, huh? And you couldn't understand this; we had all fought together in the war, we knew there were no real heroes in that unfair and wretched enterprise. All that ShinRa talk about us being heroes sounded so hollow and vain, like a tin box rolling down the street. Why would I suddenly become obsessed with that?

I wasn't.

You stretched your hand to me and told me that I could be the hero anytime I wanted, you gave this up for me. You only wanted to remain my friend, nothing more.

Then you just let me go. You could have caught me. You could have killed me. We were already living targets for ShinRa. But your loyalty didn't belong to ShinRa anymore, if it ever had. You warned me that the army was on the move and so were the Turks, who were even more dangerous, and you urged me to leave before any of them would come. I listened to you. Maybe I shouldn't have. If they had come, then you would have been forced to choose your way right there and then and I know you would have chosen to defend me. Because I've always trusted you with my life.

But I listened to you and I left, not without telling you that I was going directly at ShinRa HQ. At Hojo, nothing less.

You said that unfortunately you couldn't meet me there and we both grinned. There was no mistake in this, Hojo was joing to be left at my hands. Had it not been for Angeal and Zack-the-puppy, he would be dead now, but they saved him. Sometimes I swear to Goddess Angeal really stepped on my nerves with his twisted view on honor and such things! What was so honorable in keeping that scum alive so he would be able to plague mankind even more than he already had?? I never understood.

Now Hojo's still alive and well and Angeal is gone, while that stupid little puppy waves around his Buster sword. It fills me with renewed pain and rage every time I see him. I know, I know, he's not guilty of all that happened, it wasn't his fault things went like this, but I simply cannot forget that Angeal, my childhood friend, died by his hand and seeing him carrying around that sword doesn't really help.

"'_Cause I took your pain and dread  
And yet it didn't help  
You're making me so mad..."_

Yes, you're making me so mad, I feel like going insane too! I just wished I would be able to shake you until you finally understood this horror and joined me in the fight instead of just throwing me all those hurt and silent looks every time we met.

You saw us, me and Angii, both with our wings. Did you not know that you were just alike? There weren't other people like us, taking in all that mako without even blinking and having all this strength, doing all we did. Did you not get it that anything coming over me and Angeal would come over you too one day? Were you that blind or you were just denying the truth to yourself, my friend?

"_...you're sinking in the deep  
And I stretched to you my hand  
This is my caring nature  
Tonight's the final stand!"_

I'm here now, Seph. I'm waiting. I know you'll come tonight.

I sit here with my small player and listen to my music. To break this creepy silence. To smother the roars of laughter Jenova releases in my head. It can't control me but it reads my mind. And yours. And you get closer and closer by the moment and this alien knows you will soon be within its range.

I cannot let it win. Tonight is our last stand, my friend.

I will shout the truth at you and I will sound tough and ruthless. I will seem to put you down. I will call you a monster.

Forgive me, please, my little brother, for I don't know what else to do, how to reach at you! Tears threaten to betray me and fall as I sit here thinking of what I will do to you. I should have found a way to tell you earlier. I should not have let things come to this. It's my fault. Now I will have to shake you to the bottom of your soul and slap you in the face with words too cold and harsh. And all this while I need your help.

Ha ha, hear Jenova laughing inside my head!! It knows, the demon, that you could have helped me recover more quickly way back after our last spar, when you offered me your blood. That stupid Hollander didn't have a clue, he thought our blood would not match because of your cells. But it does and it's the only thing that would save me or at least extend my life. Pretty ironic, huh? What kills the human part inside us, keeps us going nonetheless.

I sit here waiting to crush you with my words while wishing at the same time that I could just hold you and never let you go and run away with you in another world, in another end of the universe because you are the only family I have left and I am all you got. And yet I'm fearing that Jenova will take control of you sooner than I will be able to reach you and everything will be lost for good.

I sit here, struggling to breathe and trembling with the coolness, shrivelling in my leather coat, pulling the neck of my shirt upper and upper as much as I can. Not knowing how much more I will resist.

Waiting for you, to put you down and ask for your help, all at once.

What will you do, Seph?

* * *

**Music listened in the making of this:**

**Hungry Lucy - "We won't go"  
My dying bride - "For my fallen angel"  
****Apocalyptica - "Farewell", "Far away", "Death zone", "Ruska", "Conclusion"**

**and, of course, Papa Roach - "Scars", which also inspired this whole fic.**


End file.
